1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to device management. It relates more specifically to portable security devices such as SIM cards used for configuring communication devices such as cell phones.
2. Description of the Related Art
A communication device is a device with communication capabilities. Examples of communication devices comprise a personal computer equipped with a networking equipment (e.g. WiFi card, Ethernet card, Wimax interface, etc.), a cellular phone, a PDA (personal digital assistant) with communication means (e.g. via Bluetooth, ZigBee, HiperLan 1 or 2, IrDa, USB, etc.), an M2M (machine to machine) device including a UICC, an ADSL box including a SIM, etc.
It is well known to use portable security devices such as smart cards for authenticating users of communication devices to servers. The most widespread example is certainly the SIM card, which is used in GSM mobile phones. GSM mobile network operators typically “rent” access to their network to users. However users are typically free to choose many communication devices (potentially including totally unsafe communication devices) for accessing the network. Therefore many mobile network operators have decided to provide their users with portable security devices (typically SIM cards), and only a communication device in which a proper SIM card has been inserted can connect to the network, which is a guarantee for the mobile network operator (reduced risks of credentials being stolen/copied). This is mandatory on GSM networks.
With the development of the telecommunications industry, communication devices have become more and more complex. For example mobile phones are no more simple phones limited to voice services, but can now connect to the Internet, take pictures and videos, record sounds, play music, provide GPS information, etc.
It has become more and more complex to configure communication devices. This is a problem for network operators who are unable to sell services to many users simply because the users, even when they have a recent communication device able to manage such service, often do not know how to configure the communication device. Typically configuring a mobile phone for Internet access requires typing the IP address of a proxy server, some port numbers, typing the address of a POP server for the email account, etc.
A new area of research and development has therefore emerged, which is called “device management”. The applicant already manufactures portable security devices (in particular special SIM cards and special USB tokens) used to configure mobile phones and personal computers. The applicant also provides servers for device management (devices such as mobile phones can be configured by a server such as a GDM server through a network). In the context of mobile telephony, it has seemed useful to reuse the SIM card and assign it an additional task, namely the device management. SIM cards can therefore be used, when first connected into a mobile phone, to configure the mobile phone according to the policies of the mobile network operator. Some standardization bodies have even specified a number of ways to carry out device management. In particular OMA DM specifies how a server can configure a device, and is already implemented. OMA CP also specifies how a server can configure a device, but is not yet implemented to the best of the applicant's knowledge. On-going standardization initiatives (such as DM_SC) should in the future specify how portable security devices such as smart cards can assist in configuring a device.
Unfortunately the problem of device management is not yet fully solved. In particular, if a user has a communication device, and decides to change it for another communication device (e.g. a more recent model), the settings of the new communication device are either not initialized automatically, or initialized according to the operator's rules, and the user typically loses all his specific settings (e.g. what he configured himself, manually, possibly differently from what the operator had envisioned). For example, the default settings for an email account may be to use the email address provided by the network operator, while the user may have decided to use another email account as his main account. Therefore when changing his communication device (e.g. mobile phone) the user would have his email account configured, which is of course better than no email at all, but configured with the wrong account.
Some techniques have been proposed to backup and restore certain pieces of information such as the address book of a SIM card, however this does not concern the configuration of the communication device (e.g. mobile phone) but rather some personal data of the user which are stored on the portable security device.
It would be conceivable to use an OMA DM server in order to backup and restore the configuration of a first communication device into a second communication device. However, the radio resources would be impacted due to the number of data exchanges to be performed.